Catching XP in just 20 Minutes

As
the SANS Institute notes, 20 minutes is not long enough to update your
Windows PC before it is too late. If you take a new PC out of the box,
plug it in to the Internet, and power it on, ...few people... know
enough to immediately hie thee over to Windows Update and get the
latest patches from Microsoft. Then reboot. And get more patches. And
reboot. Ad infinitum.

"Mrs. Jones, I'm sorry to inform you,
but we've run the tests, and it appears that you have XP. Now don't cry
- it's bad, but it's not a death sentence. Modern science has advanced
in recent years, and it's now possible to live a reasonably happy life
with XP. And there's a survivor's group that you'll want to meet as
well."

Set Windows Update to automatically update the computer, without asking questions.

Install a personal firewall that blocks almost everything by default.

Buy a 2- or 3-year subscription to an anti-virus program and set it up to automatically download all updates.

Buy an anti-spyware tool and set it up to automatically update, scan, and remove spyware.

Replace Internet Explorer with Mozilla or Mozilla Firefox, and then hide that blue E so it's not on the desktop.

"In
the 1980s, the most important factors affecting how prevalent computer
usage becomes will be reduced cost, increased functionality, improved
availability and servicing, and, perhaps most important of all,
progress in user-interface design. The first three alone are necessary,
but not sufficient for widespread use. Reduced cost will allow people
to buy computers, but improved user interfaces will allow people to use
computers. In this article, we have presented some principles and
techniques that we hope will lead to better user interfaces.

User-interface
design is still an art, not a science. Many times during the Star
design we were amazed at the depth and subtlety of user-interface
issues, even such supposedly straightforward issues as consistency and
simplicity. Often there is no one right answer. Much of the time
there is no scientific evidence to support one alternative over
another, just intuition. Almost always there are trade-offs. Perhaps by
the end of the decade, user-interface design will be a more rigorous
process. We hope that we have contributed to that progress."

After closing the browser for the first
time in some weeks I couldn't get into a customer's bugzilla site
anymore where I knew we had just changed the password recently. So, I
thought I must have forgotten the password - but no: Guru Meditation
Error! There are two layers of authentication and the first layer
didn't change.

Turns out my browser even remembered the correct password for me!

I just confused myself because I remembered that something had changed, so I insisted that it had to be different ;-) ROFL

That's
what I get in the times of rock solid operating systems and browser
software with infinite uptimes. If I once close the browser by mistake,
I have a hard time remembering how to launch it :-)
12.07.2004, 11:53

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